Never one to sit still, Steven Wilson is back with a new solo record. The follow up to 2021’s polarising The Future Bites album (read our review here), The Harmony Codex adopts a very different approach. Where The Future Bites was tightly focused, with a single sonic palette for the most part, The Harmony Codex is deliberately eclectic, with Steven exploring a wide range of sounds and styles across the ten tracks on offer. It’s still very recognisably a Steven Wilson record – his voice and musicianship remaining easily identifiable even when he’s taking a trip down Aphex Twin-inspired side alleys – but the wider scope makes it feel more like a “best of” set, the mix of material taking in everything from the slightly naïve, psychedelic prog of early Porcupine Tree to the electronic pulse found on his more recent works, and more besides. Yet, while The Harmony Codex is an ambitious, career-spanning record, that doesn’t make it an easy listen. Steven Wilson remains an artist first and foremost, and while certain tracks (What Life Brings for example), might suggest a certain consolidation (and even reconciliation), with his musical past; as the album progresses, so we find Steven exploring the ever-wider boundaries of his musical landscape, with the result that songs frequently evolve in front of our very eyes, making this one of his most eclectic works to date.
It opens with an airy, seven-minute piece that will do little to allay the fears of those who felt that (the excellent) The Future Bites was a step too far. With stuttering synths, heavily processed guitar, and banks of gleaming keyboards providing the musical backdrop, Inclination sounds rather like Vangelis and Brad Fidel having a jam with The Orb, only for the song to come to an abrupt halt some three minutes in, transforming into a more traditional Steven Wilson piece in the process (albeit with that rhythmic pulse still in play). It’s an odd opening, best summed up by the opening line “come see the fool swindle you out of the game”, suggesting that Steven is more than aware of just what a game of chance the music industry truly is. As openings go, it’s a slow-burning piece, deliberately awkward, as if challenging the listener to follow rather than suckering them in with an instant hook – which proves to be an appropriate decision for an album that refuses to play the same card twice, frequently genre hopping around Steven’s influences. Making the point, second track What Life Brings ditches all the modern trappings, harking back to the gentle psychedelia of Up The Downstair with its tightly coiled voices, acoustic guitar and piano motif. For those hankering after additional Porcupine Tree material, this will surely scratch that itch – it’s the most Porcupine Tree thing Steven’s has yet included on a solo record. In contrast, Economies Of Scale dips into the waters previously inhabited by Aphex Twin and Kid A-era Radiohead, the result being a rather beautiful Steven Wilson piece underpinned by a scattershot rhythm that gives the song a slightly skewed feel.
With the early pieces having suggested a certain nostalgia, the ten-minute epic, Impossible Tightrope, may initially suggest a similar approach, lachrymose strings drawing the listener in, only for Steven to suddenly unleash a barrage of complex percussion, stabbing riffs, and jazz sax. As such, the track occupies similar territory to Grace For Drowning, although Steven’s not interested in making it too easy to follow, and so the track once again comes to a screeching halt, just as you think you’ve got a handle on it, to introduce a mix of piano and reverb-drenched vocals (heavily manipulated) at the centre of this swirling dust cloud of ambitious prog. Very much a track that fans will love or hate, the closest contemporary artist engaged in such bipolar compositions is Devin Townsend, whose Empath was similarly unpredictable. Following so multi-tiered a piece, the first half of the album takes another sidestep to conclude with the rather lovely, Rock Bottom – a track that which offers a moment of calm, via To The Bone-era balladry.
Segueing directly from Rock Bottom, Steven Wilson nods to both DSOTM-era Floyd and FOABP-era Porcupine Tree, with the heavy, heavy synths of Beautiful Scarecrow – a brilliantly fluid piece that weaves a sense of beauty and lingering threat into its five-minute run time. Continuing the run of songs that lie at the album’s heart, the expansive title track is a haunting, mostly-instrumental piece that mixes gentle guitars and spoken-word elements to hypnotic effect, swelling to a conclusion that recalls the extended outro of Abandoner. In contrast, Time Is Running Out is a short, sweet piece, driven by the electronic percussion and possessed of the slightly bitter line: “it’s just rock and roll, with no quality control”, as if pre-empting the inevitable “it’s not XXX” comments that emerge on the internet with almost every new release. Then there’s the brilliant triphop of Actual Brutal Facts, a very different beast altogether that stands as an album highlight, driven by nervy impulses and building to a dark climax washed through with feedback and dirty bass – play it loud and feel the paranoia wash over you. The album closes with the woozy Staircase, another track that seems to play across the range of Wilson’s back catalogue, although its most obvious antecedent would be his quite brilliant Insurgentes album. Building from a relatively sparsely arranged opening to take in funky bass lines, haunting piano, and prog solos, it’s a bold finale, reminding us once again that Steven Wilson is not an artist content to remain within his comfort zone.
While less obviously polarising than The Future Bites, The Harmony Codex is no easy ride. While tracks such as Rock Bottom and What Life Brings offer relatively straight forward moments of pastoral beauty, Steven’s gleeful exploration of ambient textures and electronica is liable to infuriate the prog purists who, apparently, like to forget just how closely intertwined the prog originators were with the early adoption of electronic music forms. Lyrically, Steven appears to allude to exactly this across several numbers, but if he’s aware of potential backlash (and, after the unwarranted gnashing of teeth that met The Future Bites, he could hardly not be), he’s not willing to compromise his muse – something for which we should be grateful.
As is so often the case with Steven Wilson albums, The Harmony Codex is a journey, escorting the listener through Wilson’s storied past before introducing them to his increasingly wide-ranging present. With nods to material from across his vast catalogue, it’s a testament to Steven Wilson’s inquisitive spirit that he still has sonic vistas to explore, and here, on The Harmony Codex, he takes multiple genres and weaves them into a work that flows beautifully. Complex, wide ranging and frequently ambitious, The Harmony Codex is a perfect example of a talented artist following their muse. Best heard as a complete piece, it is one of the year’s most consistently rewarding albums. 9.5/10
